Re: SC53

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7290

Shocking Doctrines, Shocking Short Shrift
A Review of Noami Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"
by Carolyn Baker

................Disaster Capitalism-Microcosm and Macrocosm

Disaster capitalism is according to Klein "...orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities." It has its origins in the "Chicago School" of economics made famous and perpetuated for decades by University of Chicago economics professor, Milton Friedman, who actually coined the phrase "shock treatment" to describe the psychological pummeling of societies and individuals who might stand in the way of or could be made more useful to the advancement of corporate goals. One recent example was the dramatic use of shock and awe, including using those very words to describe it, against the nation of Iraq during the invasion by the U.S. in 2003. A more recent example to which Klein devotes a great deal of attention is the devastation of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.

The endgame of disaster capitalism is the total privatization of what have throughout American history been state services. Not surprisingly, the ultimate outcome of unbridled disaster capitalism will be the supplanting of government by corporations.............

.................. The Stochastic Steady Stream and 9/11

By the time one arrives at Page 300 of the book, one is riveted by the array of conspiracies-and I use that word intentionally, that Klein lays out. The genesis and evolution of disaster capitalism from her perspective are anything but stochastic. They are intentional, well-orchestrated, and brilliantly executed. It's almost like watching the 2001 film "Conspiracy" a "dramatic recreation of the Wannsee Conference where the Nazi Final Solution phase of the Holocaust was devised." Nothing is spontaneous, accidental, or left to chance. Consequently, disaster capitalism's escapades constitute in terms of lives lost and suffering perpetrated on humanity the most horrific holocaust in human history.

But what it seems that Klein hasn't quite grasped is that disaster capitalism is the mechanism for achieving the consummate agenda of organizations such as the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission, namely the dissolution of nation states which will ultimately be replaced by global corporatocracy. For most progressive intellectuals, the mere mention of these organizations suggests "conspiracy theory" since progressives tend to minimize their role in international and domestic affairs. Moreover, a number of left-liberal poster children are members of one or more of the ruling elite groups mentioned above-an inconvenient truth, so to speak, for true believers tethered to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in search of salvation from all that they perceive as evil.

With respect to 9/11, Klein's incisive grasp of disaster capitalism's brilliantly devised, superbly-engineered machinations alongside her stochastic insistence that the administration did not deviously plot the catastrophe defies all logic. By Page 400, the reader has digested an encyclopedia of conspiracies carried out by a series of U.S. administrations of both political parties, but on Page 426 is nevertheless asked to believe that 9/11 "just happened".

On that page comes the most breathtaking statement of all-that quote to which I promised to return. Arguing that the U.S. government did not have a hand in the attacks, Klein states:

The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous. An economic system that requires constant growth, while bucking almost all serious attempts at environmental regulation, generates a steady stream of disasters all on its own, whether military, ecological or financial.

I could not agree with Klein more in terms of economies based on growth generating a steady stream of disasters, but 9/11 is a bit more than a few molecules in a "steady stream." It was and is the defining moment in the history of disaster capitalism.

The truth of 9/11, says Klein is "less sinister, and more dangerous"? What could be more dangerous than the U.S. government orchestrating the attacks in order to achieve all of the motivations that Klein has so incisively and painstakingly explained? After 425 pages of unrelenting recitations of bona fide conspiracy, I am asked to swallow the stochastic non-analysis of a steady stream in which 9/11 just happened to rear its ugly head?

Progressive Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley recently noted that: "This administration was seeking a massive expansion of presidential power and national security powers before 9/11. 9/11 was highly convenient in that case," George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told Keith Olbermann on Countdown. "I'm not saying that they welcomed it, but when it happened, it was a great opportunity to seize powers that they have long wanted at the FBI."

No Jonathan, you and the overwhelming majority of American liberal academia would not say they "welcomed it", but you're stepping right up to the line between "it just happened" and the U.S. government's orchestration of the attacks. Both you and Klein realize the cost to you in left-liberal circles if you were to actually cross the line.

I cannot recommend Shock Doctrine highly enough for a multi-layered understanding of the origin, evolution, and likely outcome of disaster capitalism. It offers an extraordinary economic and geopolitical map of historical and current events. Yet the book's treatment of 9/11 is disappointingly characteristic of the progressive response to the tragedy which belies once again its intellectual armoring against venturing into the territory of conspiracy. Yet nowhere in Shock Doctrine is the most absurd, incongruous, intellectually insulting conspiracy of all, the "official" story of 9/11, challenged.

While I have been on record for years arguing that the attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government, and while I have repeatedly supported the 9/11 truth movement, I no longer feel a sense of urgency in pursuit of 9/11 truth. The larger picture of the collapse of empire and civilization, of which 9/11 was only one piece, compel me to expand my horizon. Nevertheless, when otherwise perspicacious minds tenaciously embrace the official story, no doubt in fear of being labeled a conspiracy theorist, I feel equally compelled to challenge the contradiction.

Shock Doctrine offers us priceless documentation of the lengths to which empire has gone and will go to achieve and maintain primacy; however, its one shocking and pivotal incongruity must be illuminated. Unless we are willing to cross the line into the forbidden domain of pre-meditated mass murder that was 9/11, we are adrift in a stochastic world of "stuff happens" while surrounded by a sea of intentional, well-orchestrated holocausts.

So What Does It Matter If Progressives Can't Go There?

With respect to a book like Shock Doctrine which plumbs the depths of malignancy that the United States has inflicted upon the world and on its own citizens, the inability of its author to allow herself to know the whole truth about 9/11 and speak it, is astounding. Not only does it reveal the intellectual constraints which the progressive movement has foisted upon itself, but it facilitates a tenacious clinging to endless layers of denial. Even worse, in so doing the liberal left perpetuates not only everyone else's denial but the false hopes and pseudo-solutions of the American political chimera, the corruption of which is consummate and which serves no other purposes than choreographing a caricature of democracy and ensuring massive social control.

9-11 Was An Inside Job, Wake Up America